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Admin: “If We Keep Sending Out Bechtel Surveys, Eventually We’ll Get the Right Quote to Shut You All Up”

Deeming the current crop of quotes to be somewhat unpublishable in its current state, Caltech administration has resorted to combing through exponentially growing piles of student responses to find the perfect quip to shut people up long enough to open Bechtel.

The scheme is theoretically motivated by the infinite monkey/typewriter theorem; as applied to the Caltech context, it would imply that given enough time and surveys, a student comment with the perfect combination of anti-Rotation sentiment and popular undergraduate appeal would appear and end the Bechtel debate once and for all—in the correct way, of course.

Even as feedback is being collected in the wake of the Bechtel decision, administration is actively continuing to refine the generative algorithm needed to extract the perfect student response. Accordingly, the current office hour policy has been adjusted to bar students from bringing in any electronic devices or backpacks as they speak their piece. “We want students to really think on their feet, you know? None of that ‘well-reasoned’, ‘evidence-based’ crap,” said one administrator. “A scientific institution like us could definitely use more ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’ in making major decisions that will impact the lives of students for decades to come.”

Caltech skips straight over the ‘thoroughly examined’ part of COUCH’s recommendation with the same bold spirit that took us to the moon.

As evidence of preliminary success, administration has pointed to the effective manipulation of COUCH report quotes. “All we did was sift through the data and pick out the points that exactly supported our hypothesis, like the highly accomplished scientists that we are,” modestly said one faculty member. “What else would you have expected from a top-class institution like ours?”